


Home is Where the Heart Is

by goldenrose95



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Angst, Definition of home, Depression, Eating Disorder, Established Relationship, Grief, I'm putting down everything I can think of, M/M, based on the one time Dan said "You don't even know what it's like at home" during tatinof, but still, like this is the angstiest shit I have ever written, set at the end of 2015 tatinof, sorta - Freeform, that might not be saying much
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-09
Updated: 2016-04-09
Packaged: 2018-06-01 05:39:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6503029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldenrose95/pseuds/goldenrose95
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dan learns the true meaning of home only after he loses it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Home is Where the Heart Is

**Author's Note:**

> So I saw these two posts about how Dan associates Phil with home (heck I even responded to one) and poof came an idea (with more than the usual dose of angst, I must admit) 
> 
> http://goldenrose95.tumblr.com/post/132628366931/bloominglester-one-really-cute-part-idk-if-it  
> http://dan-howells-handwriting.tumblr.com/post/132642243585/danstopit-this-stops-right-there#notes
> 
> The idea of home is always a bit of a soft spot for me I guess. Sorry this is way overdue. Should have been completed last year.

“Jesus, I could sleep for a solid thirty three hours,” Dan said, flinging his tired limbs unceremoniously onto the seat of the van. Phil climbed in behind him with a chuckle.

Dan threw his head back in his seat and closed his eyes as the engines purred to life. This was the last of their tour for now - they could get a few days of rest after this. As much as Dan loved meeting their fans and putting on a show with Phil, he had to admit it was wearing him out a little.

All he wanted to do was to go home.

Phil sat down beside him and fit his zebra cushion round his neck. Dan threw a glance at the driver, then stood up to close the partition between the driver and the passenger seat. He then plopped back onto the seat next to Phil, grinning as he nuzzled Phil’s neck cushion and wrapped his arms around Phil’s waist. Phil smiled back and put an arm around him as well.

“You tired?” Phil murmured. Dan laughed quietly into the cushion as he shifted around to find the most comfortable position possible in a van seat. Large as the van was, he desperately missed his bed and sofa crease right now.

“I just want to go home,” Dan replied, sleep already seeping into his voice. He heard the sound of Phil’s laugh and felt the gentle pressure of his lips against the top of his head.

“Go to sleep. We’ll be home soon,” said Phil, his voice low and soft. “Hey look, it’s raining.”

Dan lazily lifted his head as the van began to roll away. Large, fat raindrops were pelting the windows and turning the world outside gray, which was the case ninety percent of the time in an average British year anyway.

“You know what that means,” Dan said, snuggling back into Phil’s shoulder. Phil’s gentle laughter travelled through his bones and magnified to a rumble in his ears.

“Anime or movie with popcorn and hot chocolate?”

“Christ, I love you so much.”

“Or maybe we could have a game night. You know, pull out some of the older games we haven’t played in a while.”

Dan murmured assent, his brain shutting down in sleep. They were going home, where he could rest properly, but for now, this wobbly van seat and Phil's arms around him would have to do.

Phil quietly laughed again, gently kissed his hair, and whispered, “I love you, Dan.”

***

_"We just wanted to think of a way to preserve it, because you never know what could happen, like, YouTube could get deleted, a meteor could crash into our house and kill one of us..."_

_"Don't tempt fate, Dan."_

_"What, don't tempt fate- don't tempt a meteor to fly through the window and kill one of us?"_

_"You never know!"_

_"So more than just videos and things floating around the internet, we wanted to make something, something physical, something real that you can have and hold and to remind you of all of these good times and to prove that once, there were these two guys called Dan and Phil who met each other on the internet and created this entire world."_

_"Okay, now stop, because everyone's gonna cry, including me."_

***

Dan had no memory of what happened after that when he woke up a day later, surrounded by his family in a hospital bed. He thought he could distantly remember the screech of tires and the sound of honking horns, but he couldn’t even tell if that was just his imagination.

Because he had been asleep when one of the tires in their van gave out and they skidded into the guardrail, right into the path of a truck that had been driving behind them. Dan was lucky to wake up with only a broken arm and a concussion.

Phil never woke up.

The news was witheld from Dan for another full day, mostly because his family feared it would be too much for him to bear on top of all his injuries. They intended to hold it a little longer, but from the moment he woke to the time he was sedated so he would finally sleep, Dan never stopped asking about Phil. It wasn’t until his mother broke down in tears that he learned the truth, and he just stared blankly at her, his mind shutting down in an effort to process what he just heard. When it finally dawned on him, Dan almost ran out of bed, screaming Phil’s name. Adrian had to restrain him.

Dan begged to see Phil, refusing to believe any of it until he saw the body himself. He had to be held down in bed a few more times because apparently due to some medical configuration he still needed to be "resting”. But after countless pleas and near breakdowns Dan's parents finally brought Martyn in to tell him what he had been denying all this time, that Phil really was gone, that the ambulance had arrived to find him dead on the side of the road.

"They said he never had a chance. The truck driver immediately called the ambulance but... It was... it was too late for him. When the paramedics arrived he was already..."

Martyn's voice caught at the end of the sentence, and he held his lips in a tight line to keep himself from bursting into tears. Dan stared down at his bedsheet, his brain still refusing to register the facts, and the two sat in silence as the news seeped into the air around them like poisonous gas. Martyn had to excuse himself soon after that, and Mrs. Howell saw him out while Dan lay back in bed, three words ringing in his brain and turning his entire world upside down.

_Phil was dead._

***

_“_ _Here we go. The whiskering begins._ _”_

_"It's time."_

_"Wait, something's missing. Do me up Dan. I mean... whisker me up."_

_"That's got off to a bad start."_

 

_"We should probably get our noses ready."_

_"Nose workout!"_

_"Whisker time!"_

 

_"I think I've discovered why we act the way we do in these videos."_

_"Why?"_

_"We just get high off the sharpie fumes."_

_"Whisker~ Whisker whisker~ Satisfactory whiskers?"_

 

_"Do you guys have a cat whiskers fetish or something?"_

_"Uh, no. Whisker cat whisker~"_

 

_"What is with the cat whiskers? What cat whiskers?"_

 

_"Why do you always make cat whiskers on your face?"_

_"Meow."_

***

Attending Phil’s funeral was one of the hardest things Dan ever had to do.

He was released from the hospital by then and was staying with his parents at their hotel room. Adrian had already gone back home to stay at a friend’s until their parents returned - he couldn’t miss school for too long. After several examinations Dan's doctor had allowed him to go home with his arm in a cast and a stern warning not to overwork or overstress himself. Which was funny, considering that what he was about to do would probably give him more stress than everything he had done in his entire life combined.

Phil’s funeral was held at a small chapel next to a cemetery where he was to be buried. It was a simple one-story building painted white, and by the time Dan arrived with his parents, there was already a long line of cars parked by the road leading up to the place. Phil had been well-loved by many; Dan of all people should know that.

Aside from the fact that it was the funeral of his best friend and boyfriend, Dan had other reasons to be present for the ceremony: one, he had been asked to deliver a eulogy by the Lester family, and two, the entire world expected him to be there. He had been Phil's best friend and boyfriend (although that last part was left in speculation for everyone except Phil and himself) and it would raise more questions than sympathy if he was to miss Phil's funeral. Dan honestly couldn't care less what other people thought about their relationship, especially when all of the friends that he shared with Phil kept asking - or were sometimes downright assuming - about him attending the service. He had seriously considered not going, but ended up deciding that the best way to give Phil a last goodbye was for him to be surrounded by all the friends that he had so loved. So he tried to hold back a shaky sigh as he entered the chapel that was now Phil's funeral hall.

Dan didn't recognize half the people in the room - relatives or old friends, presumably - but after he first approached Mr. and Mrs. Lester and offered the best condolences he could without breaking out in tears, he was immediately surrounded by his youtuber friends, asking if he was alright, if he was doing okay, and telling him they were sorry about Phil. The entire British youtubing world seemed to be there to commemorate Phil; even someone from the BBC was present to offer him their condolences, like he was the one that needed to be comforted. Like he was a member of Phil's family.

If only.

During all this time Dan kept his gaze carefully and deliberately away from one place - the altar, where Phil's casket now lay open for one last farewell. It was when he first saw that dark mahogany box that Dan realized he had never had a chance to properly grieve over Phil's death. He had been living in a state of half-denial from the time he heard the news till now, and he hadn't wept for Phil's death except for the few confused tears that he occasionally found trailing down the sides of his face at night. He knew that if he saw Phil he wasn't going to be able to hold it down, and the last thing he wanted right now was a public breakdown, especially when he was supposed to deliver a fucking eulogy when the actual service began.

So it should have been understandable that red lights started flashing in Dan's mind when PJ, the good-natured friend that he was, asked if he had seen Phil yet. He had no idea why he answered truthfully, and when PJ offered to go with him to the casket, Dan, being the physical embodiment of general social awkwardness, couldn't refuse. But Dan knew he would have to go up at some point, and having a friend around could help him stay calm. So with a deep breath Dan followed PJ to the altar, his gaze fixed straight on his friend's head as the dark brown box that contained Phil’s remains drew closer and closer. Then PJ stepped aside, and Dan was face to face with the open split lid of the casket.

Phil lay in soft, cushioned white silk, dressed in a black suit and looking, as they say in the books, just like he was sleeping. He looked peaceful, happy, even, and Dan could almost imagine Phil turning over in the silken sheets, mumbling incoherently as Dan heard him do on the rare mornings when he woke up before Phil did. But Phil lay pale and unmoving, like the casket alone was frozen in time, leaving the world behind - leaving Dan behind.

Dan sank to his knees beside the box, only realizing then that his eyes were almost brimming over. His uninjured hand reached into the casket and landed on Phil’s, as if to check that what he was seeing was real - except they weren’t the hands that he had so often held, in secret, in sleep, in their flat when they were alone together. They were cold and hard, and nothing like the soft warmth he had always sought in Phil.

It was at that moment that Dan broke out sobbing, his hand clinging on to Phil’s lifeless ones. A pair of arms grabbed him and dragged him away from the casket and he didn’t fight, because whoever was in there wasn’t Phil - Phil was gone, and he wasn’t coming back. Only when those same arms wrapped themselves around him did he realize that it was PJ, and he sobbed out in his friend’s arms everything he kept in for days, when he finally, truly realized.

_Phil was gone_.

***

_"I guess you're next to me... in my life."_

***

"When I was asked to deliver a eulogy for Phil I was first and foremost honored. As his best friend and flatmate of four years I knew that Phil Lester was a prodigious person who touched many, many lives and created an extraordinary world of his own filled with creativity and genius, and I wasn't sure if I could sum all of that up in less than five minutes. But this wasn't something I could refuse, because he was my best friend, and this was the last thing I could do for him.

"But we're not here to talk about me - we're here to talk about Phil, to remember him. Which is a good thing, since he was a very memorable guy. He was unique. He was the type of guy to stick his fingers in his pocket palm up without realizing that nobody else did that. Yeah, just like that. He also attracted the weirdest people. I didn't believe half of his stories until I was there to witness it every day. He came up with a number of video ideas that were the first of their kinds. If you wanted a crazy new idea at any given time you could just ask Phil, and he would come up with the most ridiculous and creative things. You probably can't get any weirder than cheese umbrellas.

"Phil was also magnanimous. He always put others before himself, always watched out for those around him and even for strangers. If you watched... If you... watched one video from his channel... his channel AmazingPhil, you should...

"...

"... shit sorry. No sorry I shouldn't be swearing at Phil's funeral service. He wouldn't have approved.

"Anyways, um, if you watched one video from Phil's channel AmazingPhil - which I hope most of you did - you should be able to tell how much he cared about his viewers. The purpose of his videos was first and foremost to make his viewers happy, and to be mindful of each stranger that may chance upon them. He always hoped that his videos would make their day better and that they would walk away smiling. He wouldn't even swear in any of his videos because there might be ‘children watching’, and that is actually quite an extraordinary feat in the world of YouTube. He didn't even mind the times when he wasn't given credit for his creativity.

"But most of all, Phil was brave. And I don't mean it in the sense that he liked horror movies and wasn't afraid of the dark, although both are true. I mean he wasn't afraid to put himself out there in front of the world. He wasn't afraid to laugh at himself when he made mistakes and he wasn't afraid to make fun of himself. He wasn't afraid to be unique, because as many quote, 'Normalness leads to sadness.' He wasn't afraid to... He wasn't afraid to care for others, and... and to show that he cared. He wasn't..."

"...

"...

"... I'm sorry. No it's okay, I'm... I'm sorry... I’m sorry...”

***

_"Does your character live with their best friend? Are you my best friend?"_

_"I don't know. I kind of hate you."_

_"I mean, me and Janice down at the shop have been getting pretty close. We've been bonding..."_

_"You and Janice? What'd you do with Janice, Phil?"_

_"Yeah, Janice is great. But, no Dan, you are my biffle."_

_"Aww, thanks."_

***

Before they closed the casket and carried Phil out to the cemetery, Dan slipped in a copy of _The Amazing Book Is Not On Fire_ into the box. He had asked for permission from the Lesters when they asked him to give Phil’s eulogy, and they consented. He wanted Phil to leave this world with a physical copy of all the times they shared together, a proof that they had something that no one else could ever replace or replicate. At least the book was finally serving its purpose.

Dan watched with teary eyes as they lowered Phil’s casket into the pre-dug plot. He thought crying at the altar and at Phil's eulogy would have taken some of the grief out of his system, but perhaps he had been holding it back for too long.

All that remained of Phil now was a gravestone that stood reading, "In Loving Memory of Philip Michael Lester. Beloved Son, Brother and Friend."

Beloved.

_" I love you, Dan."_

Dan covered his eyes as a fresh wave of tears hit him. It wasn't fair - he had been in that van too. If anything, he should have died with Phil, but here he stood on the wrong side of the ground, standing before the gravestone of the man he had loved more than life itself. He had been with Phil for six years now, and he was a greater part of his life than he imagined. He didn't know what to do without him.

"I want to go home," he murmured on the cab back to the hotel.

"Oh honey, of course you will," Mrs. Howell said with a sad smile, placing both of her hands over his. Dan shook his head.

"No, I mean... back to our- to my flat. I want to go home."

Mrs. Howell fell silent for a minute, wide-eyed, then looked uncertainly to her husband. Mr. Howell stared quietly at Dan, who kept his gaze at the floor of the cab, and said, "Are you sure?"

Dan just nodded, not trusting his voice anymore.

"Alright. We're leaving in a couple of days. You can go back then."

"Peter..."

"He wants to go home, Elise. He should be the one to decide where that is."

Home. The word echoed in Dan's mind over and over again, and he turned his gaze to the window. The sky was overcast now, and as Dan watched the world outside speed by, a large raindrop landed on the glass and slid down the surface, leaving a wet streak behind. Dan flinched and turned his gaze back to the floor of the cab. It had rained that day too. He wasn’t sure if he could look at another drop of rain without thinking about Phil. If he could look at anything without thinking about Phil. Dan squeezed his eyes shut and leaned back in the seat of the cab, suddenly feeling like all the energy had been drained from him.

He just wanted to go home.

***

_"You don't even know what it's like at home!"_

***

It had been a week since Dan was back "home". He tried so hard to do something productive, like filming a video or responding to his fans' tweets sending him condolences. Both attempts failed, and he ended up with a half-filmed footage of inarticulate ramblings about Phil that ended in tears and a short tweet that didn't sum up half of what was going on in his mind.

_Thank you guys for all your support and consolations, but at the moment I'd just like to ask for some privacy. #RememberPhil_

The rest of the days Dan mostly spent on doing nothing in particular. He lay in bed, wrapped up in his duvet, sleeping for fourteen hours at times. He went on the internet, tried to watch some tv show or anime or play a game until he realized he didn't really want to. It was like he was sick of everything he tried to get his hands on. He meandered around the flat, a strange nagging feeling in his gut like he was missing something.

Oh wait, he was missing something - or some _one_.

Dan lay in his bed curled into a ball, his duvet thrown over his head and his phone in his uninjured hand. He still wasn't used to waking up without Phil by his side or to a quiet flat. He had closed all the blinds so the room was dark, but the clock on his phone showed 1:45 p.m. He knew he really should be getting up from bed, get himself something to eat - but he didn't feel like it. He didn't feel like any of it.

He tried to put up a show for his friends, pretend he was alright and just needed some time alone. He honestly wasn't sure if anyone was buying it, but Louise had sent a message just the other day asking how he was doing.

"I'm glad you're holding up," she said. "I'm sure that's what Phil would have wanted as well."

_Phil_.

Dan didn't send a response, but maybe she was right. Phil never liked seeing him unhappy. He could tell from the mugs of tea or hot chocolate Phil brought him whenever he was going through yet another existential crisis, the arms that held him on the bad nights when Phil lulled him to sleep, and just the way Phil’s voice changed, the way he just _looked_ at him when Dan told him what he was going through. He had to at least try to get back up, for Phil if for nothing else.

Dan slid off the bed and trudged his way to the bathroom. He stared at his reflection in the mirror for a second and realized that he looked absolutely haggard: his skin was sickly pale, his hair was curly and matted and sticking up in every direction, and his eyes were sunk in deep. Phil had often called them the color of coffee or chocolate, or even the color of “really nice mud when it’s raining that like, sucks in your toes when you step in it." But now they seemed darker than ever, and Dan couldn't see any "warmth" in them that Phil had so often told him was the best thing about his - in Dan's opinion - boring-ass eyes. He had always secretly compared them to Phil's - what could he even call that color? Blue interwoven with green and yellow that he now knew for a fact changed with every lighting. It was just like the rest of him - beautiful. Mercurial.

Gone.

_"Ahahaha oh my god! What is even on your face?"_

Dan half-expected Phil to walk in on him at any moment and take one look at his face to know something was wrong. Phil would then quietly come behind him, put his arms around his waist and lay his head on his shoulder, asking if there was anything he wanted to talk about. Dan quickly turned on the tap and splashed his face the best he could with one hand. He then automatically turned to the shelf where they kept the towels before realizing there already was one on the towel bar, because _of course Phil isn't here to use it up_. He stared at it for a second before ripping it off the bar and roughly wiped his face, refusing to differentiate between the water and the tears.

All he did was wash his face and he already wanted nothing more than to return to his room under his duvet cocoon and lie there till the apocalypse came and wiped out everything in existence. But he promised himself and, to a certain extent, Phil, that he would start picking his life back up. He couldn’t just live in his bed for the rest of time. That was not what Phil would have wanted.

So Dan dragged himself to the kitchen to get himself something to eat. He hadn't eaten anything much in the past week besides what he could find around the kitchen that required minimal cooking and pizza that he ordered once and stored in the fridge, eating it piece by piece whenever the hunger drove him. Luckily he still had some cereal left - _because obviously Phil isn't here to steal it all_ \- and he poured a generous amount into the bowl. What milk he had left had long gone sour, so he stared down at his bowl for a second, remembering all the sublime glory of dry cereal that Phil had so passionately preached every chance he got. Dan allowed himself a small smile as he lay a spoon over his bowl of dry country crisps.

_"Dan has already assumed the browsing position."_

Dan brought his cereal to their - _the_ lounge sofa, mindlessly scrolling through the channels of the TV and lifting spoon after spoon of dry cereal into his mouth. He couldn't quite bring himself to watch the anime he and Phil had left off yet.

After making a full circle of all the channels without finding anything worth watching, Dan leaned back in his sofa and closed his eyes, an advertisement of some sort buzzing in the background. This was wrong. Phil had to be here somewhere, making random comments on whatever was running on the TV or rambling on and on about cereal and waffles or just generally being Phil, his simple, transparent positivity lighting up the room in ways Dan never realized he would miss.

Dan grabbed the remote and launched it at the wall, not bothering to check if it was damaged. He couldn’t get Phil out of his mind, because he was just realizing now that he couldn't turn to any corner of this splintering shell of a flat without seeing traces of Phil everywhere. Definitely not the lounge. The kitchen? The office? Even the fucking hallway, for fuck's sake.

_"It's time for some Halloween baking! Intro my glamorous assistant!"_

_"Hello Dan and Phil gang... genies... psychotic robot animals..."_

_"Hello internet, so today I'm having another existential crisis."_

Dan found himself roaming each of the rooms in the flat, searching for something that he himself didn't know. It all felt strangely surreal, like he was walking through a museum that had reconstructed a model of some famous historical site. But in every door he entered, upon every wall and in every corner he kept seeing Phil, and he just wished it would _stop_ , just leave him alone and not remind him of how hollow his chest felt right now. And yet at the same time, he couldn't stop. He couldn't stop looking for Phil in every inch of every room, for every little memory they shared together, because that was all of Phil he had left. He couldn't stop, but he hated every minute of the restlessness that was driving him mad. Home was supposed to be a place he could return to after every tiring day for a warm embrace. It was supposed to be a place for him to wait for Phil while he was away, with promises of soft kisses and bedtime cuddles once he was back.

This wasn't home.

Dan stopped in front of the one room he hadn't entered since he began his meaningless wandering. A room whose door he kept closed and hadn’t opened for a week, because he didn’t even want to look at it.

Phil’s room.

His fingers grabbed the doorknob so tightly it almost hurt, his mind screaming _This is a bad idea_ over and over again. But it was this or another pointless tour around the flat, so Dan firmly pushed all that out of his mind before he finally turned the knob and entered the room.

The blinds were up, and the room was filled with the bright midday sun. Dan blinked and stared around the room, which was pretty much the same as how Phil always left it. He bed was made, but the duvet was crinkled in places where he hurried through. The few items of clothing scattered on the floor, the posters on the wall, the lion plushies that seemed to follow Phil everywhere - everything was just so _Phil_.

Dan closed the blinds and looked around again. In the muffled light the room somehow looked different, like it was a reflection, a replica of something that had once been. Suddenly everything felt so strange, though he knew practically every item in this room by heart. Every little thing triggered some sort of memory that clawed at the empty void inside him, and though the entire room screamed _Phil_ , he wasn't there anymore. Dan didn't even remember why he entered this room to begin with.

Dan peeled back the green and blue duvet a little bit and slipped in, the familiar feeling of the mattress welcoming him back after the long absence. Except that wasn't what he was here for. He was searching for the mass of black fringe and morning glasses, for the secret "I love you"s and the warm embraces only one pair of arms could give, the game and movie nights and the collab videos, the yelp of surprise when Dan jumped on him in bed and the giggle when he tried to wake Dan up with a kiss, the man that had been his entire world and now no longer was. Dan drew the duvet over his head and closed his eyes, breathing in what little scent of Phil it still had left. But the more he tried to piece his world back together he realized that it was impossible, because he didn't have all the pieces with him.

This wasn't home. His home died weeks ago. Now he could never be home, ever again.

 

_"This was the most fun I've ever had..."_

**Author's Note:**

> Also on my tumblr, goldenrose95


End file.
